Recently in an effort to separate the frontend test and backend test on travis, we came to know about the travis feature called matrix, Which helps us to define parallel jobs in the build.
Our initial idea was to define separate ENV varaibles using matrix and conditionally run the scripts. Our .travis.yml file looked like below one.
---
sudo: required
dist: trusty
language: ruby
rvm:
- 2.1.2
before_install:
- sudo apt-get update -qq
- sudo apt-get install -qq mysql-server mysql-client unzip
- nvm install v5.5
before_script:
- mysql -u root -e 'create database app_test;'
- cp config/database.travis.yml config/database.yml
- bundle exec rake db:test:load app:generate_secret_token
- npm install
branches:
only:
- master
cache:
bundler: true
env:
global:
- RAILS_ENV=test
matrix:
- TEST_CATEGORY=frontend
- TEST_CATEGORY=backend
matrix:
fast_finish: true
script:
- if [ $TEST_CATEGORY == 'frontend' ]; then npm test; fi
- if [ $TEST_CATEGORY == 'backend' ]; then bundle exec parallel_rspec -n 2 spec; fiWe were able to run jobs in parallel, but still they boot up same vm and configure everything in both VM.
Since for our frontend spec doesn’t need any ruby related stuff we started looking for more ways to override the vm’s used for the jobs. And suddenly this comment caught our eye.
As per the comment there are ways to override vm in matrix but seems like they experimental since there is no documentation was found on it. Also travis lint will throw linting error. But anyway thought of give a try and updated my travis config to the below one.
---
sudo: required
dist: trusty
branches:
only:
- master
matrix:
fast_finish: true
include:
- node_js: 5.5
language: node_js
env: NODE_ENV=test
cache:
directories:
- "$HOME/.nvm"
- "$HOME/.npm"
before_install:
- nvm install v5.5
install:
- npm install
script:
- npm test
- rvm: 2.1.2
language: ruby
env: RAILS_ENV=test
cache:
bundler: true
before_install:
- sudo apt-get update -qq
- sudo apt-get install -qq mysql-server mysql-client unzip
before_script:
- mysql -u root -e 'create database app_test;'
- cp config/database.travis.yml config/database.yml
- bundle exec rake db:test:load app:generate_secret_token
script:
- bundle exec parallel_rspec specNow for frontend spec we dont need to setup anything related to ruby.
Now the frontend job uses node_js vm where as backend job uses ruby vm. Also our frontend job finished with in 3 minutes which is 5 minutes gain from previous version since we removed all the ruby and rails setup for this job.
Even though now we have multiple jobs, github integration will show only build status not per job status.
Disclaimer : The above feature is undocumented by travis and may change in future.